Tubular shrink sleeve application devices commonly utilize a mandrel over which a tubular shrink film is moved for cutting, and then the cut sleeve-type label is ejected from the mandrel onto a container located below the mandrel. A downstream application of heat can then be used to shrink the film.
The tubular shrink film is typically provided to the application device in a large roll. As one roll of tubular shrink film is consumed, a replacement roll must be added. This replacement roll is typically spliced to the original roll, but the resulting spliced label is not satisfactory for labeling the products on the assembly line. Traditionally, the products with the resulting defective labels would be manually removed from the pool of labeled products at the end of the assembly line, which is both wasteful and labor intensive.
Therefore, it would be desirable and advantageous to provide a system and method that reduces the effort associated with labels that incorporate a splice.